Texas House introduces bill to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve

Strategic exit liquidity for the rich fucks who are lobbying to have others hold the bag.

Yay I can't wait for my tax dollars (and probably SS) to buy useless crypto from rich idiots. If only we could put that money into high speed rail, healthcare, school lunches, ... Nah that stuff is clearly less important.

Didn't some country already try this and fail miserably?

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Edit: Oh yeah, El Salvador invested $150M in bitcoin only for it to lose half its value lol

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Edit 2: lmao at the replies. For those of you who haven't read the Wikipedia article on this, here's the gist of it:

• Salvadorian president Bukele forces businesses to accept BTC as legal tender, sets aside $150M in cash to back up his BTC plans, and offers $30 to anyone who signs up to a government-backed digital BTC wallet. Most Salvadorians never used it, and most who did just spend their $30 and leave. Less than 0.0001% of financial transactions use this BTC digital wallet, and most Salvadorians disapprove of Bukele's decisions, with >70% having little or no confidence in BTC, and 9/10 not even understanding what it is.

• Bukele announces a "Bitcoin City", which leads to El Salvador's overseas bonds to fall by 30%.

• In 2022, because of the BTC crash, the Salvadoran national reserves lost $22M.

• By 2022 only 20% of businesses were actually using BTC, and only 3% thought it was actually valuable. By that point El Salvador's BTC had lost half of its value, and Bukele responded to its volatility by "buying the dip" like a maniac, with many economists predicting the country would likely default on its debt. And in usual right-wing fashion he cut public spending to make up for his incompetence, including water infrastructure and public services in some municipalities.

• Finally, after all of this bullshit, in March 2024 El Salvador's BTC holdings stood at a 50% profit. Now that it's valued at >$100K their profit is higher, though by how much I'm not sure. Bukele still hasn't sold the BTC for some reason.

If you look at all of this and genuinely think that the recent (and undoubtedly temporary) increase in the value of Bitcoin makes this whole thing a "Big Chungus W win for Bitcoin" or whatever, I strongly urge you to stay away from crypto and any casinos for your own sake. I assure you that there are plethora of better ways to spend the time of government employees and taxpayer money, and you deserve better than whatever faux-utopia crypto bros have sold to you. Actually investing in the country's infrastructure and economy, or even something like Norway's sovereign wealth fund, are much better ways to improve the economy without some long-term gamble that causes citizens to suffer.

Oh yeah, let's make a reserve out of a volatile non-liquid digitial asset with extremely limited and contextual utility. Let's also send the treasurer to the WinStar World Casino.

Why invest in the future when you can invest in Ponzi scheme 2.0!

There should be a law against being this dumb.

I have a better idea for a crypto plan. Let's chain crypto bros to their mining rigs and throw them both into the ocean. Take out two pieces of trash at once.

I wonder if that's why BTC started approaching 107K.

Hmmm.

I wonder if they have certain expectations (read inside information) about the inevitable collapse of the USD that will coincidentally happen during the next presidency of the guy with ties to Russia and his VP who is backed by the dark-right silicon crypto bros.

Nah. That's crazy talk.

Edit:

Consider that Peter Thiel bankrolled JD Vance and that he, musk, zuck, et al have essentially established a technocratic state within the new admin. https://www.ft.com/content/408fb864-5831-4b1d-beef-fd1966b3beed

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-trump-vp-peter-thiel-billionaire/

The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk might support that PAC to the tune of around $45 million per month. Musk has denied that specific claim since, but the America PAC, which is run by Lonsdale, appears to be created to support the “PayPal Mafia” worldview — which includes (and indeed depends on) the bankruptcy of the United States.

https://washingtonspectator.org/peter-thiel-and-the-american-apocalypse/

At least PayPal had a suitably grand mission—the kind that post-bubble skeptics would later describe as grandiose: we wanted to create a new internet currency to replace the U.S. dollar.

~ Peter Thiel Zero to One https://archive.org/stream/zero-to-one-peter-thiel-and-blake-masters/Zero to One - Peter Thiel and Blake Masters_djvu.txt

I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.

~ Thiel The Education of a Libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/08/musk-thiel-zuckerberg-andreessen-alternate-autocratic-reality

https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/320592-palantir-helped-support-nsa-spy-program-xkeyscore-report/

https://newrepublic.com/article/183971/jd-vance-weird-terrifying-techno-authoritarian-ideas

And one final, very important thought:

https://cryptonews.com/news/new-report-suggests-billionaire-peter-thiel-connected-bitcoin-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-heres-what-you-need-know/